Next Gen News

Now the FA must do more to \ raise awareness of women's football in England to increase

The women 's World Cup starts today and I' m really excited to see how England fare. In the years that I 've seen women' s football, the game has changed enormously, and the league game I saw between Bristol Ladies and Chelsea Ladies far better in quality than the international game I watched, England play six or seven years ago. That can only bode well for the future.

But despite my perception of the game changed with I 'm sure if the same can be said for many of my colleagues. Male soccer players don 't really tend to talk much about women' s football and I can imagine 't be many of them just the World Cup this week. In fairness, the problem of lack of exposure, which persists even today has been. If you are a male soccer players their opinion on women \ asked's football might not be for free expression, but that 's probably because they haven' t be a game not seen in so long

During the league season, even with the introduction is still not the new Super League, it 's the most accessible sport in procedure. Apart from a couple of live League games on ESPN, and showed the FA Cup final, it is very difficult to figure out what happened during a game. Admittedly, I 'm the kind of person who sit and watch Sky Sports News results on loop, but it should actually be easier to find for the average fan on the notes, let alone see the action.

A few weeks back I was searching for the Bristol Ladies live score and I could not find it anywhere. I looked on the FA website and there was nothing, and I'm not on Twitter so I wasn't about to sign up to it just for the game. Eventually I found a gambling website that had the scores and a bit of detail on the action so I ended up following that. But the site shut down as soon as the whistle blew so I couldn't check the final score and I ended up having to wait for a text from Siobhan Chamberlain, the Bristol Ladies goalkeeper, just to find out what had happened. To my mind that's loose thinking; the governing bodies want to promote the women's game but they're not making it accessible enough for fans to follow.

And the promotion is the key. I 'd like to use our site to create a greater awareness of the Bristol women's team next season. In the women's FA Cup final this year reached it would be the perfect opportunity for us to have them on the pitch at half time and encourage fans to watch the game was.

Never mind photoshoots, what will the standard of football be like during this tournament? One of the key criticisms of the women's game has been the standard of goalkeeping. Years ago when I first watched women's football I must admit that it was frustrating to see – players were shooting from 40 yards out and scoring, as the keepers struggled to cover the full-size goalmouths. These days, however, there appears to have been an evolutionary shift in the physique of the women in goal – Siobhan is very tall, and the Arsenal keeper, Emma Byrne, is Van der Sar-esque in build. That shift ties in with what is happening across the game: the players are fitter, faster and more skilful than four or five years ago. The game is certainly on the up.